Last year, 238 women across the globe were killed every day.

Six women were killed every hour, at least four of them at the hands of someone they knew.

According to the 2018 report on the killing of women and girls released Sunday by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, about 87,000 were killed worldwide in 2017, 58 percent of them by an intimate partner or relative.

Many of these deaths could have been prevented.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, director of policy analysis and public information at the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told The Washington Post that more than 30,000 of those deaths were the result of domestic abuse.

Domestic homicides are “the tragic end of a cycle of abuse and violence,” Lemahieu said. “When a female loses her life, it is not without predictions – you see incidences of verbal and other forms of violence. The pattern is established long before the homicide.”

Violence against women is almost universally underreported to authorities, according to the study. The reluctance to come forward is multifaceted. Research suggests it can be attributed to a “fear of reprisals, economic and psychological dependence, anticipation that the police will not take the charges seriously and viewing the assault as a private matter,” the report states.

The U.N. report was released to coincide with its International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a campaign to raise awareness of gender-based violence and its global prevalence.

The report found that the likelihood of women being murdered by relatives or intimate partners has increased by more than 10 percent since 2012; currently, women in the Americas and Africa are the most at risk.

The report also called for a coordinated response from law enforcement that empowers and protects victims and holds their abusers accountable. Several countries have launched initiatives and training to combat gender-based violence.

“Underreporting of domestic abuse highlights the justice system as one area in need of much work,” Lemahieu said. He cited figures from Italy. Italy reported that 31,500 women, of every 100,000 ages 16 to 70, will experience physical and sexual violence, according to a lifetime survey. Domestic homicides occur in 0.4 percent of those cases, while 35 will report domestic abuse to authorities.

“We need to sensitize the justice system – making women feel comfortable reporting, that they are listened to and that there are implications for the abuser,” Lemahieu said.